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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Corporate City Redux

Last year I blogged about how NYC is increasingly becoming a corporate city -- a city ruled by and for the very rich. Of course, NYC has always been a "corporate city" since it has long been the capital for corporate America, with many great national and international businesses headquartered here. But there used to be a division between the corporate world in NYC and how the city government was actually run.

The corporate/private enterprise world didn't control our government, didn't have power over our land-use, our public schools, even our parks.

But now it does: charter schools are replacing public schools, parks are being run less by the parks department and more by private foundations -- and the city is turning over huge swaths of our public lands to corporations.

Look at this week's New York magazine for proof. There are two huge articles -- one a huge new super-expensive luxury apartment building (that is primarily for people who don't even really live in NYC) and another on Hudson Yards which will be the biggest, most expensive private development in our city's history.

This is radical. And totally out of character with NYC's history.

It's very depressing and scary to think about how this wonderful, great city -- a place where "our poor huddled masses" used to come in search of a better life is being turned into a place where only the rich are welcomed and can survive. It's still a great city, still great place to live but, if we continue down the road of the corporate city, will we still be so?